A/N: Firstly I wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone for the lovely comments I've received on my last couple of stories... it really means a lot to know people are reading and enjoying.
This time around I am trying something a little different, and this is going to be a multi-chapter story, mostly filling in some gaps that we are missing – so, looking at pre-season four Patsy and Delia, and the episodes Delia hasn't been in this season etc. I really wanted to set this in season three, but I was having a lot of trouble with doing that from Patsy's POV, and still managing to include Delia, given the story I've gone with (although I do have some ideas, which will probably appear as flashbacks of sorts in later chapters), so instead you can assume this chapter is just prior to the first episode of this season, shortly after the Christmas episode.
Who knows how this headcanon will stand up against tonight's episode, or next week's, but I think we might be needing something slightly less angsty to keep us going if it's headed where I think it's headed...
I want to say a HUGE thank you to my wonderful friends Laura and Cam for helping me with this story and for always being such brilliant people to bounce ideas off. A lot of this headcanon is shared.
Thank you for reading and I hope you'll enjoy it. This is just a short prologue – it's maybe quite different from my other stories, writing-style wise so I'd love to know what you think.
PROLOGUE
When she was little, she had a flip book of a butterfly in motion. It had been given to her by one of her father's friends, and she had treasured it, only taking it out on special occasions, and flipping through its delicate pages carefully, as though watching a real butterfly dance about in a glass jar. It had been taken, lost, in the prisoner of war camp, but she still thought about it, and the softness of the paper under her fingers, the colours of the butterfly's intricate wings flitting from page to page.
She wishes she had a flip book of how they had first met, so she could watch that over and over. But she doesn't.
She does, however, have a journal. Even as a little girl, she kept one. Even during the worst days, the darkest days, she would try and find something positive to write about. She filled the pages with drawings and poems, and, most of all, hope.
After disease and starvation took her mother, and, eventually, her sister, she stopped using it.
She keeps her journal – the new one – tucked behind the dresser, wrapped in a spare pillow case, safe from Trixie's intruding eyes. She only writes in it when she's absolutely sure she won't be seen; when Trixie is asleep, or out, or loudly chattering away in another room. She pushes the dresser back as far as it will go, and slots the book away between the skirting board and the back, ensures it isn't visible.
Her biggest annoyance is that the day they met, she didn't write anything in it. Or, she did, but not enough. Because the day they met, it didn't seem important enough for her to have kept a record of it. Looking back, that's her biggest regret. Her mind, though sharp as a pin most of the time, gets foggy when she tries to remember, filling in details she's not quite sure are accurate, and it's frustrating because she wishes so much that she could remember it exactly. That it hadn't felt so irrelevant at the time.
Nothing about Delia seems irrelevant now. And that's somewhat the problem.
She's not sure when it happened. She doesn't have the single moment pinpointed and she thinks she probably never will. Somewhere along the line, the dread that settled in the pit of her stomach every time they met, turned into something else. Somewhere, she stopped being afraid. She stopped telling herself that she was being ridiculous, and that Delia clearly wasn't interested in her in that way – despite the obvious hand-holding, and knee-brushing, and smiles that lit up her whole face when she laughed; things which she convinced herself were all in her head – and accepted the fact that maybe, just maybe, somebody else was like her. Somebody else felt the things she felt, despite being told it was wrong. At some point, later, the dread turned into indifference, and then a light, airy feeling that danced about in her stomach and made her head woozy, as if filled with that butterfly, from the flip book, and she'd never quite managed to go back to normal.
She has a year's worth of memories, some written down, some not, jumbled about in her head. Delia grabbing her by the hand one night, dragging her up the stairs of the housing unit, and spinning her around on the landing. Delia, after one too many drinks, falling asleep pressed up against her in the back of a taxi cab, and mumbling 'kiss me, Pats', and her wanting to, but being too afraid. Delia cupping her face in her hands and pressing her lips firmly against hers, three nights before she was due to leave, in the dark, where nobody could see them. Months of trying to decipher feelings, and pussy-footing around, not wanting to make the same mistake a second time, ending with one brisk, determined move. Nights out, after she'd gone, seeing the old gang again, and glimpses of Delia standing alone at the edge of the dance floor, as she laughed, spinning in a young doctor's arms, turning away to swallow her own guilt. Awkward conversations resulting in slammed doors and more time spent apart than together, and Patsy wishing she didn't have such a bloody awful temper sometimes.
Delia never pushed. It didn't matter how infuriating Patsy was – and she knows, looking back on it, that she was, and she feels ashamed for it, frustrated at herself for wasting time – she never pushed. She hinted. If you could call it that. It was more like heavily suggesting but it always fell on deaf ears. Patsy wasn't ready. Patsy didn't want to risk it. Patsy wasn't sure her feelings were feelings at all. Delia stood by, patient and understanding, and loving her even when she didn't want to be loved, until she couldn't stand it any longer, and something had to give.
It's right there, in her journal, in black ink, bold against the stark white pages. Delia wants me to make a choice. I don't know what to do. She'd agonised over it. It had been too easy to pretend it was nothing, to push it out of mind, to not deal with it. All the while she had long nights of women in difficult labours, and clinic duties, and district rounds, and paperwork – the list was seemingly endless – it was easy to force feelings aside. But cornered directly, with Delia's eyes brimming with tears, and nowhere for her to escape, she couldn't hide any longer.
She had wanted to tell her they were nothing. The words had been there, in the back of her mind, on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn't. She couldn't lie to herself because she's not dishonest. It just isn't in her nature. And it wouldn't be fair. So instead, she had done what she does best, and ran.
She's not sure, even now, when she made the decision. When the pieces slipped into place and suddenly it all made sense to her. She looks at Delia now – catches the tiniest whiff of her scent left behind on her clothes; thinks of her – and she feels giddy. But she isn't sure where that came from, or where it began. Maybe it was there all along and she's just better at swallowing down her feelings than she thinks (after all, she's had years of practice; that's the one thing her father taught her – or rather his absence did).
Maybe, she thinks, flipping through the pages of her journal one night whilst Trixie's out dancing, tracing her finger across Delia's name in slightly faded ink, it doesn't matter when it happened. Maybe it just matters that she feels it. It's been so long since she was truly, deeply happy, that she thinks maybe she deserves this, and that that is all that matters, not its origins, or the memories she doesn't quite remember. It's here and now. It's the future they make for themselves, and the things she feels now. Maybe, it's time to stop worrying about the why and just enjoy it.
If only it were that simple.